1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications network management systems and, in particular, to provisioning services across a network or a set of networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network operators and network customers request the activation of services by use of simple service orders known as service activation requests (SARs), often provided on paper hardcopy. SARs are processed based upon customer demand and their requested activation date. Customers may demand immediate activation or delayed activation in the short- or long-term, i.e., service requests may have various levels of time-criticality. In most situations this is a highly manual and labor- and paper-intensive process.
Customers may also require repeating services, such as a certain quality of service (QoS) every weekday and a different QoS on weekends.
To add a further dimension to the problem, SARs (including service changes) may also involve complex interactions between many disparate network management systems (NMSs) and Element Management Systems (EMSs) and the elements therein and thus may not be confined to a single network resource under local control. For instance, a customer may request end-to-end service between two distant cities. Provision of this service may require obtaining dedicated bandwidth on several network resources owned and/or controlled by different parties (NMSs, or EMSs), such as a metropolitan area network in the originating city, a long-haul transport network, and a metropolitan network in the destination city.
This complexity introduces a level of difficulty in automating the creation of service activation requests. Automated SARs must properly include all the necessary detail to meet the customers requirements while not over-burdening the operators of the network management system tasked to satisfy customer service requests.
What is needed is a method of automatically generating complex service activation requests including all necessary resources and connections in response to a customer""s multi-element, time-critical request.
Presently disclosed is an automated method and apparatus for examining and classifying a complex customer service activation request (SAR) to determine whether repeatable, schedulable, or scaleable elements are present and provisioning service(s) accordingly. In cases where the request is a simple one with no repeating elements, a traditional SAR is placed and serviced by the network management or element management systems according to means well-known in the art. In the more complex case, however, the SAR comprises elements that are both repeatable and schedulable and is thus classified as a service activation module (SAM). The automated process of the present invention determines the starting quality of service (QoS) level at the beginning of the service time period (the service life cycle) requested by the customer. The process also determines the overall length of the service required as well as the trigger points at which elements of the customer""s service request repeat or are reinitiated (e.g., a change in QoS). The process thus creates a SAM comprised of a set of SARs and QoS change trigger points organized by time and QoS. In some alternate embodiments of the present invention, the SAM is examined by the network management system for resource availability. If one or more resources are not available during the service life cycle, a report is generated to indicate that certain resources are unavailable. In a further alternate embodiment, a set of templates representing various QoS levels can be downgraded to reflect the fact that certain QoS-identified services are not currently available. If, however, all resources are available, the SAM is transmitted to the NMS/EMS provisioning process. The provisioning process then automatically and rapidly creates and transmits configuration messages to the affected resources.
The present invention thus provides faster and more reliable service provisioning for extremely complex, time-dependent service activation requests including repeating elements. As such SARs/SAMs are becoming more common in modem network operations, the automated servicing method of the present invention enables the necessary scaling to enable expansion and enhancement of customer service.